BOOK TITLE: IC814 HIJACKED! THE INSIDE STORY
AUTHOR: FLT ENGR ANIL K.JAGGIA
REPORTING BY SAURABH SHUKLA
PUBLISHER: LOTUS COLLECTION, ROLI BOOKS, INDIA
PRICE: Rs. 295
NO OF PAGES: 223

In less than three months from the date of the hijack of IC814, Jaggia and Shukla have published a day-by-day account of the unfortunate hijack. The narration is quick, racy and professional; the cover of the book and its layout is attractive and pleasing; the almost perfectly objective style of Anil Jaggia ( the flight engineer of IC814) and Saurabh Shukla( investigative journalist with the Indian Express) leaves no stone unturned. A book that is difficult to put down until one has turned the last page.

The book opens with a dedication to the honeymooner, Rupin Katyal, the only victim to have lost his life on the aircraft; this is followed by a page with two diagrams: one showing the aircraft layout of business and economuy classes, galley, toilets, etc, with special markings on the seats occupied by Rupin Katyal, his wife, and others such as the two hijackers in Business class; the second map is a close-up of the cockpit seating arrangement, with clear pointers as to where the flight engineer, the pilot, the co-pilot sat as well as where “Red Cap” sat during the hijack. These maps are followed on the next page by a chart that traces the journey of the flight from Kathmandu to Kandahar, plotting the flight movement with brief notations at every stop.

The Annexure in the back-section lists the thirty-six terrorists whose relaease had been demanded by the hijackers, their names, parentage,, origin, the separatist group to which they belonged, with their date of arrest, complete with relevant particulars of these terrorists. Next, is the passenger manifesto, with the full name-list of all passengers on board. Then there is a three-page day-by-day account of the hijack by passenger Rajesh Naithani. Additionally, for hungry information seekers, the two writers have also drawn lists of those in the Crisis Management Group(CMG) and those in the Central Committee(CC) who dealt with the crisis from the ground.

The narration itself is racy, objective, carefully analytical, and brief. The suspense is heightened by the manner in which the narration is divided: the camera alternates and shifts briskly between the onboard drama, as recounted by Flight Engineer Jaggia, and the political and administrative machinations in Delhi, Amritsar, Kandahar, Dubai, etc, as described by Saurabh Shukla. The narration focuses on the various factors that not only allowed the hijack but also caused Rupin Katyal’s death and also allowed the faux pas at Amritsar.

Jaggia’s name for the the head of the hijack mission is “Red Cap” the man the other hijackeres called,“Chief’. Jaggia found that Red Cap had “an accent similar to those of Pakistani taxi drivers in Sharjah”. He wore a red balaclava inside of which he was wearing photchromatic glasses in order to disguise his eyes. He entered the cabin just as flight purser, Anil Sharma, was leaving with the now empty cups of tea and coffee that the cockpit crew had just enjoyed.

“The intruder pushed him aside and forced his way into the cockpit, saying, “Koi hoshiyari nahin karega. Koi hilega nahin. Tayyara hamare kabaze main hain (Nobody move or try to act smart, we have seized the aircraft”). … A frisson of alarm ran down our spines. We were being hijacked.” Jaggia continues to describe the developments that folowed. Another hooded hijacker, Burger, entered the cockpit, saluted Red Cap and whispered to him. Red Cap ordered them to fly westward. Meanwhile, “Captain Sharan had quietly selected the relevant transponder frequency and passed on a coded message to Ground Control ” telling them that they had been hijacked.

While Jaggia shares with us the tension and frightening chain of events that followed on board the aircraft, Shukla now takes us to the airspace just above Lucknow. In what can only be termed ironic, he tells us that a VVIP Boeing aircraft was flying just four minutes ahead of the hijacked plane, and its occupant were none other than the Indian Prime Minister, A.B.Vajpayee and the Union Civil Aviation Minister, Sharad Yadav.

“Flight IC814 was in close vicinity of the Prime Minister’s aircraft. Yet the coutry’s most powerful person remained ignorant of the crisis. It was only after he would land at Palam Technical Area in Delhi that he would be informed of the hijacking. It is intriguing why the pilot of the Boeing chose to remain quiet and did not pass on the message of the hijacking to the PM’s entourage. He was certainly privvy to the information….Prime Minister Vajpayee was not informed of the hijack while he was airborne despite the availability of an Iridium phone in the aircraft. Surprisingly, the Joint Intelligence Committee comprising the Intelligence chiefs and National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra failed to inform the Prime Minister.”

The book is full of such terribly disturbing but valid questions: considering the fact that in a crisis time plays a vital role, why indeed was the PM kept in the dark? Why did Mr Mishra not contact the PM on the phone, why did the pilot not share his knowledge of the hijack? Questions that trouble one even more because they lack acceptable answers.

Meanwhile the story reverts to the aircraft and Jaggia’s narration:
“ “Have you pressed the hijack button?” the hijacker asked urgently.
“What button?” asked Captain Sharan. “we don’t have any hijack button.”
“Why are you telling lies?” shouted the hijacker.
“We don’t have any such button,” Captain Sharan tried to reason with him, “this is an old aircraft.”
“You seem destined to die at my hands,” the hijacker said ominously….
“Captain saheb, fly the aircraft at leisure. We are in no hurry. This is the millennium flight. We shall go around the world and on millennium day, we shall give a gift to the government of India.” ”

Jaggia observed later that Red Cap seemed to know the aircraft well, “almost as if he had been in it before.” More proof of this is brought out:

“”Victor, Victor, Alpha.” The crackle burst through the speakers in the cockpit. It was the standard call from the pilot of a VVIP aircraft in the airspace around Lucknow. The hijacker appeared annoyed at this. An expression of disgust clouded his face. “Ha, Victor, Victor, Alpha,” he spat. I was puzzled at his anger. It was obvious that he was familiar with the call sign. It was an ominous warning—this man was a professional, and he meant business….Tension was now palpable in the cockpit. Not only was the hijacker armed- he seemed both determined and knowledgeable.”

The hijacker demanded that they be taken to Lahore, confident that they would be able to get landing permission at Lahore. Jaggia asked himself how, without having a nexus with Pakistan, they could be so sure of obtaining permission to land. As the fuel started running out, and the permission to land in Lahore remained elusive, they finally landed in Amritsar for re-fuelling.

At Amritsar, Shukla takes us back to the ground realities: Brajesh Mishra took charge and ordered that re-fuelling be delayed, because the Crisis Management Group (CMG) had said “We need about an hour and a half to mount a commando operation.” Delay tactics were then put into motion.

Meanwhile back with Jaggia, we learn that the hijackers have ordered that the aircraft keep moving all the time. This was followed by Burger getting impatient and coming up to Red Cap to ask him a couple of times, “Shall we start killing?” Red Cap replied, “Nahin, aap aisa nahin karen.” The desperation increased and Red Cap finally got panicky when he wanted the aircraft to be airborne, “You take the aircraft to the end of the runway and crash it for all I care. Do it. But just move from here.”

And the book takes us from hope to despair, from dismay to joy through page after page of crisp narration.

“IC814 Hijacked!” is a must read for all those wanting to know of the behind-the-scenes realities both on board and on the ground. The crew’s careful handling of a fanatical suicide squad is remarkable. The narrative style that focuses on facts and not adjectives is both engrossing and spine-chilling. The indecision, the slowness, the confusion, the anger, the islamic lectures and fanaticism, the absolutely untrained approach to the whole crisis is brought out well by Shukla. Mistakes follow mistakes until one does can only smite one’s brow; one feels, at the end of the book, as if the return of all the passengers save one, is not the result of skill and strategic negotiation, but is in fact really a miracle from above. The flat-footed response of the Indian CMG and the Cabinet Committee is frightening: it would not be rash for one to feel after reading this account, that if one flies in the Indian skies, one flies at one’s own risk, insha-allah.

A must-read and great value for money indeed. What the book misses is minor: Jaggia and Shukla have only left out the emotional element, there is little of the passenger’s reactions to the whole crisis, an interview with Rachna Katyal would have helped add another dimension to the book. But these are really small potatoes.

That Jaggia and Sharan resumed flying a fortnight after the hijack is admirable. While they do the airline proud, one hopes their example will make others follow suit. The CMG, security and political personnel etc all need to take the book seriously. India needs not miracles but expertise and efficiency in a crisis of this nature.

Book Review
“A MARRIED WOMAN” BY MANJU KAPUR
PUBLISHED BY INDIAINK, PAGES 310
PRICE INR 295

Manju Kapur’s second novel is like having a four course meal in reverse. One begins reading a novel but realizes at the end that it was only a political tract masquerading as a novel.

The first three chapters are enticing and interesting, Ms Kapur’s sarcastic and ironic style breezes one through the first three chapters but from then on neither the style nor the content can rescue the book from hara-kiri.

Chapter 1, first the ice-cream: her laconic descriptions of the protagonist, Astha and her parents’ middle class values ring true and are humorous: her father’s adherence to an exercise regime and strictness about homework, her mother’s worries about her only child’s marriage and society, their united concerns about money ( very well brought out in a tiny vignette in a restaurant as they enjoy the tikkis less and calculating the profit the shopkeeper makes, more), her teenage crush on Bunty and the end of that, her heavy petting with Rohan in his Vauxhall and the end of that too and her broken heart.

Chapter 2: the chocolate sauce: Hemant the hero enters, they meet and get engaged; her obsession with him, his obsession with sex, their wealth, his increasing boredom, her increasing boredom, her father’s death after shifting, the arrival of a swami in her mother’s widowed life, the birth of her two children, the second one with fear and anxiety, prayers for a son, yes, it’s a boy, thank God.

Chapter 3 the sweet and sour vegetables, the main course: her husband doesn’t understand her, her attempts at writing poetry are unappreciated, her children don’t engross her, her mother doesn’t listen to her and leaves for Hrishikesh and then what’s worse, her mother’s long impersonal, religious sermon-letters from there. One hundred pages so far so good.

Chapter 4, suddenly it’s the garlic and onion soup: the novel falls into the quicksand of political activism and remains mired there. Surprise, it’s time for Babri Masjid! One smites one’s forehead, oh no, et tu brute, not this hackneyed politically correct one-sided view, please. Astha’s encounter with Aijaz, the nice Muslim (ergo, aren’t all Muslims nice?) who is such a cardboard figure that the writer cannot bring herself to ask him what he has to say about Hindu sentiments vis-a-vis the Ram temple but who miraculously manages to provoke her into research on the subject. Commissioned by a Muslim she does the inevitable, finds not a shred of evidence to redeem Hindus; she becomes agitated and spews fire. (Did she forget to dedicate the book to Romila Thapar? The political activist not in Astha but in Ms Kapur makes sure that Hemant( representing the saffron side) is given weak lines that are easily demolished by no other than an otherwise worldly-unwise Astha. Which leads one to ask the million dollar question: why is L.K.Advani being called, “the Leader” and not L.K.Advani when Rajiv Gandhi gets to keep his name? This squeamishness remains a mystery: was it Ms Kapur’s personal contempt for the arch villain or her reluctance to make the man famous through her path-breaking novel (sigh, better luck next time, Manju dear) or, worse, didn’t Astha, the character, remember that old man’s name? Attempting to win political arguments with such tricks might get one cocktail invites and a publisher but sadly don’t make for even second class fiction.

The rest of the book is the poisoned pill that follows the soup, Chapters 5 to 10. Now lesbianism is the red herring used to deflect attention from the real thing. If only like Jane Austen, Ms Kapur had stuck to the small world which they both know well and can write so well about, the book would have been first class. But Ms Austen, poor thing, probably had literary ambitions, not political ones. And so we trudge through more unashamed secularist propaganda before we can be done with the book. The writer /protagonist upholds pre-marital affairs, extra-marital affairs, minority rights, women’s rights, socialism, artistic self-expression, anti-Hinduism. Great. With such major concerns, is it any surprise that good-natured affection, small joys and love find no room in the book? Those who love Astha must leave her so she might find her artistic voice through politics and so they are all garbaged one by one: Bunty, Rohan, her father, Aijaz, Pipeelika. What remains behind is only a screaming placard,”Down with love, up with the Mosque, down with men, up with art as political expression”.

Ms Kapur fails to share with us Astha’s feelings at her father’s death; she fails to tell us the details about her first meeting with her future husband and their courtship, descriptions she is so good at, there are so many opportunities she could have grabbed to add dimension to her characters. The political activist stunts the writer in Ms Kapur; even the lengthy acknowledgements at the end of the book , which usually accompany non-fiction, provide proof of the writer’s agenda. Ms Kapur should not have fallen into the trap dreaded by green fiction writers: political activism. Her characters languish when they could have acquired depth, the book flounders and the characters remain hazy blurs. The novel is suffocated by its agenda and narcissism.

Ms Kapur hopes we will think it is a tragedy of a nice talented heroine in a suffocating world but we don’t because we are never allowed to forget the other story. Like the loathed “Leader” who the writer despises for using religion to achieve political gains, Ms Kapur, too, uses fiction as a vehicle to gain converts to her political ideology. While one is accustomed to politicians stopping at nothing, when a novelist does this, one can only watch the hara-kiri with surprise.

It is the saddest political tract I have read in a long time.